Event Planning

A lot of people I talk with these days are feeling stressed out about inclusive language. (I mean, not just about inclusive language, but it’s definitely part of the mix.)


For people who grew up in a different time, when norms and expectations were different, or who grew up in and live in and often work in homogeneous workplaces, the amount of new information they need to learn to be inclusive can feel overwhelming. They’re afraid of saying the wrong thing, but they tell me that also it feels like there are so many different kinds of people out there that they don’t know where to start.

Here in the US, December is a time for a lot of holiday parties and gatherings (sometimes called Christmas parties, but you only want to do that if you know everyone involved actually celebrates Christmas).

So it’s a great time to share an edited-down excerpt from my book. It’s about event planning, and how the skills you use to plan an event like a cookout are completely transferable to the skills you use to plan and execute a communication event, like a conversation or email or press release.

 
Photo of an outdoor table near a pool, set for a party.

Photo by Vidal Balielo Jr / Pexels

 
 

From the Introduction to The Inclusive Language Field Guide:

A good event requires event planning. And a major part of event planning is thinking through the different kinds of people who are going to come to the event and taking their needs and preferences into account.

Let’s say you’re going to host an afternoon cookout and you want to make sure everyone feels comfortable and included. Once you know who’s coming, you might make a list of their various needs and how you will meet those needs.

  • “Okay, Michelle is celiac, so I’ll need some gluten-free options. And I’ll have to separate them out so there’s no cross-contamination.”

  • “Srini is hard-core vegetarian, so I’ll need vegetarian food like skewers—and we’ll want to cook them on a separate part of the grill from the meat.”

  • “Rachel goes really easily into sensory overload, so I’ll make sure there’s a quiet room they can retreat to.”

The people who attend this cookout are set up to feel good. They will probably leave feeling warmly about you, their host. Your care, your consideration, your respect for their various situations and needs—it has come through in your actions.
And the outcome is not just a good cookout. It is a closer and warmer relationship with each of those people who felt taken into consideration, respected, and cared about.

 

Photo by Farhad Ibrahimzade / Unsplash

 

I’d like you to apply this idea of event planning to what I call communication events.
 
A communication event is any social activity where language is playing an important role. There are real-time events where people are speaking (and, again, speaking includes sign languages); for example:

  • An in-person conversation

  • A lecture

  • A meeting

  • A sermon, or

  • A panel discussion

And there are other forms of communication that involve technology. People may hear, see, read, or feel them after they were produced; for example:

  • A text message

  • A post on social media

  • An email

  • A press release

  • A video on social media

  • A commercial

Those inclusive practices for event planning can get transferred right over to communication event planning. At the heart of both kinds of planning is thinking through two core things:

  1. Who do I need to think about?

  2. What needs do they have that I should take into account?

 

Photo by Miguel Henriques / Unsplash

 

 
Twenty-first-century etiquette simply asks us to take into account people whose needs have often been ignored in the past.
 
It suggests that we should treat those people with as much respect, care, and consideration as the people who have been traditionally centered and catered to.
 
For some communication events, like press releases and videos and social media posts, you can plan in advance. For example, you might make an inclusion checklist and before you post or send something out, you run through the list and make sure you haven’t forgotten about some type of person. This process is the most like regular event planning, where you set up the food and the space for all kinds of guests.
 
But for other communication events, such as work conversations and meetings and interviews, you’ll need to have practiced enough so you can be inclusive on the fly. If you’ve developed new habits, then when you go on autopilot, or are so focused on what you’re trying to say that you lose track of how you are saying it, you’ll choose the inclusive option by default. This is more like always having a thoughtfully stocked fridge and pantry so if people with different kinds of needs show up, you’re ready at a moment’s notice to offer them something appropriate.

And there you have it. If you’ve already got a framework for taking different kinds of people into consideration, you can start applying that framework and those skills to inclusive language.

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ArticlesSuzanne Wertheim